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Thursday, 2 June 2016

Can't Cut with Scissors is finished!

The Canadian Quilter's Association will be in the Toronto from June 15 to 18. This is a juried show like the American Quilters Association shows. Recently a Modern Category has been added to the judging and local Modern Guilds have been invited to have a display area of non juried quilts. The Toronto Modern Guild is having the display this year, which will include quilts made by members, as well as some challenge pieces. Despite missing most of the guild meetings since life became very busy in February, I decided to make a challenge piece. The rules were to make a 14" quilt using two or three colours from a predetermined set of Kona colours. The quilt had to be Modern and it could not have any other colours including white and no embellishment. It also had to have a faced binding.Here's my finished quilt. I chose the colours Ash, Storm and School Bus. Other possibilities were Peridot (green) Berry, Coal and Pomegranate.

I used Score 1, Floating Squares from the Book the Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters. I chose to cut free hand with scissors and used the Ash and School Bus for the squares and Storm for the fill in. The name of my piece is Can't Cut With Scissors because I found cutting straight lines freehand with scissors to be a real challenge. I had little snippets of fabric floating all around my sewing room from trying to straighten things up. I really enjoy improvisational piecing and got this section together fairly easily.

What made it get tricky was that I had to finish at 14 by 14 inches so as the work progressed, I had to think a little bit more about how the pieces had to go together and how to have things fit together to reach the right size. Because things were fairly wonky it would pull in and get smaller than I needed it to be. In the end I'm happy with how it turned out. My original intention was to quilt it with big stitch quilting with navy and orange thread,but once I started I was unhappy with the result.

In the end I opted for doing what I'm calling Improv quilting with my walking foot. Here's a close up of the quilting.

My goal was to make a quilt that I would be happy to have hanging with the quilts made by other members of the guild and I feel that I have accomplished that goal. I put it in the overnight post on Tuesday and I'm hoping it arrived safely. If you go to the CQA show maybe you will see it. If you are there on Friday afternoon drop by the TMG display and say hello. This is my third finish for the 2nd Quarter Finish Along. My original post is here. I'm linking up with Leanne of Devoted Quilter who is hosting TGIFF this week.

Lisa, I loved how this turned out. It will look great hanging with all of the other quilts. And I love how you added the angles in the quilting. They are almost like little arrows that help my eyes move around the quilt.

First things first I love the title, and I know exactly what you mean. I like your colour choice and the quilting is great, it really enhances the piece. Score 1 is harder than first seems, you did a great job

I'd have a hard time cutting straight lines with scissors too! Your quilt is beautiful. I love the colour combination and the quilting really adds so much to it. You were right to change from the big stitch quilting...I don't think that would have had nearly the same impact. Thanks for linking to TGIFF this week :)

Nice work! I like the balance of the piece and the fact that you have faced it, so the design goes cleanly up to the edge. I agree with your quilting decisions and like that you did the densest stitching in selected areas rather than all over: very effective!